


a personal heartbeat in the swell of a drum

by kwazi



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Character Study, Gen, the textbook definition of 'i just needed to get this out there'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-14
Updated: 2017-01-14
Packaged: 2018-09-17 09:27:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9315476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwazi/pseuds/kwazi
Summary: He wants to be the music. He wants to fly. There is something about the sound of his skates gliding, the cold against his skin, the way the music changes once it hits the rink. Every practice, every performance, every time he is on the ice, he can feel this need, this hunger, beating a tattoo into his heart.By the time his parents think to notice, it’s too late. This greed is already under his skin.





	

“Little Yuzuru is a needy child, isn’t he?” This is a phrase that Yuzuru hears a lot.

He is small and unruly. He has to be told to quiet down, to stay calm, to focus. Sometimes he forgets to share or think of others first. That’s the problem. His greed is unfocused, but his parents aren’t too worried yet. He’s only five. He has time to grow.

Then one day, he goes with his sister to ice skating practice as usual, but something is different. Maybe there is a new electricity in the air like the way it gets before a thunderstorm, or maybe Yuzuru is just a slow starter, and he needs a while for it to click. Whatever the reason, he sees his sister spinning away on the ice, he steps out onto that unforgiving surface after her, and he thinks with complete conviction, _“I never want to leave.”_

He wants to be the music. He wants to fly. There is something about the sound of his skates gliding, the cold against his skin, the way the music changes once it hits the rink. Every practice, every performance, every time he is on the ice, he can feel this need, this hunger, beating a tattoo into his heart.

By the time his parents think to notice, it’s too late. This greed is already under his skin.

-

“Competitive skating is very hard, Yuzuru-kun. Are you sure you want to do it?” Nanami-sensei asks.

She isn’t being patronizing like a lot of adults are to him. She genuinely wants to know, and it makes Yuzuru want to answer her honestly, but it’s hard.

Ice skating just gets to Yuzuru. It makes this feeling swell in his chest until it’s pushing against his rib cage, and it feels a lot like the onset of an asthma attack. For a split second, he worries that he might actually fly away. He can feel a thousand other heartbeats, can taste the first day of summer, can see the world open up in front of him--oceans and fields, mountains and rivers. He wants everyone to be able to feel this, too.

He says, “I love skating. I want people to love my performance.”

“Okay, Yuzuru-kun,” she smiles and pats his knee. “Tell your mother that we can start next week.”

-

“Hanyu-kun is very… intense.” His teacher is trying to find a way to phrase this delicately for his mother. “He has a hard time getting along with the other kids.”

His mother frowns. “I understand. I’ll talk to him about it.”

Yuzuru has had talks about this before. He doesn’t see how this one will go any different. He’s not mean. At least, he doesn’t try to be, and he loves his mother. He hates that he makes her worry like this. As they walk out of the school, hand in hand, Yuzuru has his head hung low, so he doesn’t have to see how the soft skin underneath his mother’s eyes looks so sad.

“Yuzu,” she begins softly, “What happened?”

“Nothing. I didn’t do anything. I just don’t like playing with the other kids. They don’t get why I care so much about ice skating. They think it’s weird,” Yuzuru mumbles. He’s never been able to keep his thoughts from his mother for long.

“Oh, Yuzu. Are you getting made fun of? Do you want to stop skating?”

He knows his mother means well, but his whole body seizes up at her suggestion. He tightens his grip on her hand and looks at her with beseeching eyes. “No. No way.”

She smiles, small and tight-lipped. “Okay, okay. That’s okay.”

Yuzuru goes back to hanging his head. “Can we just go to practice now?”

His mother frowns and stops them as they reach the school gate, dropping down beside him so they’re at eye level. “Yuzuru, do you love skating?”

“Of course,” he answers. Isn’t it obvious?

“You’ve always said that you love it because you want other people to love your performance, right?”

He nods.

“That’s what I’ve always admired about your skating.” His mother runs a hand through his hair. Her voice is as soothing as the repetitive motion. “It’s so clear that you love it, and you want to share that love, but not everyone will get to see you perform. Not everyone will always get it, so sometimes you’ll have to use your words or connect with them in other ways. Pushing people away isn’t going to solve anything. Do you understand me?”

Yuzuru nods at his mother’s words, eyes wide. This is much different from their other talks. Usually, it’s scolding about how he was being selfish or rude. He’s only eight, but he thinks he might get it now. Yuzuru might be a greedy child, but if there’s one thing he knows how to share, it’s his love.

“Good.” His mother smiles, again. Maybe she can see the understanding in her son’s eyes because it is no longer so tight this time. “Now, let’s go to practice.”

Yuzuru smiles back. At the thought of practice, at the idea of not making his mother sad anymore, at the conviction of focusing his greed, channeling it all into ice skating so he can share the best parts of himself and make everyone happy.

-

Yuzuru hates the doctor’s office.

“He has chronic asthma. Sometimes it will get easier with age and sometimes it won’t. There’s not much we can do, but I don’t think competitive skating is good for his health,” the doctor says.

Yuzuru really, really hates the doctor’s office.

-

It is 2006, and Yuzuru sees a swan on TV. The ice shines under the lights, and the man standing in the center of it all seems in danger of being swallowed by the immensity of the audience stands and the intensity of the competition.

Yuzuru gasps. He thinks, quietly and carefully, that this skater is beautiful. He didn’t know that men could be beautiful the way women could be when they skate. This isn’t the powerful perfection of Plushenko’s jumps. This is grace and delicacy. The first cherry blossoms of the spring. The thin frost that greets you in the early winter mornings.

This swan is beautiful, and that is how Johnny Weir ends up firmly in place upon Yuzuru’s list of legendary skaters right beside Plushenko. Johnny Weir knows how to fly, and Yuzuru wants to know what that freedom tastes like.

-

Yuzuru’s favorite subject in school is literature. Sometimes the perfect articulation of another’s feelings can also make Yuzuru think of open skies and open wings.

His mother was right. Not everyone will be able to see him perform and not everyone will get it, so he needs to find another way to explain for them the feeling of happiness and love. Words aren’t as good as music and skating, but they’ll do for now.

-

It’s his first Grand Prix Final, and Yuzuru spends five days in Italy. Italy is nothing like anything that Yuzuru has ever known. There is an oldness to the city. A wisdom and a charm.

He loves it. Usually, when he is in a city, it’s the hotel and the ice rink, but this time is different. He wants to see everything, so when a boy with sunshine hair offers to show him the places around the arena, Yuzuru doesn’t hesitate to accept.

This boy is strange. He is something new to Yuzuru. He isn’t a skater but a volunteer at the event. He smiles easily and, despite the language barrier, tries to talk to Yuzuru. He doesn’t even seem to mind if Yuzuru takes a while longer to react. He makes Yuzuru blush way too easily and his palms sweat.

It is the last day of the competition. Yuzuru is getting ready for his free skate. The boy finds him in an empty hallway, and Yuzuru smiles on reflex, remembering warm bread and cold streets and the smell of Merano. The boy smiles back, and suddenly, before Yuzuru can take the time to string English words together, he knows what that smile tastes like.

He is kissing a boy for the very first time, and a feeling swells up in his chest until it’s pushing against his ribcage, and it feels a lot like the onset of an asthma attack. For a split second, he worries that he might actually fly away.

The boy pulls back, and Yuzuru has to stop himself from selfishly chasing it. He laughs and tucks some of Yuzuru’s hair behind his ear and says, “For luck.”

Then he is gone as abruptly as he arrived, and when Nanami-sensei finds Yuzuru again, he is still touching his lips, trying to make it as real as possible.

“Yuzu, what are you doing? It’s almost time to skate,” Nanami-sensei chides. It’s unlike Yuzuru to wander off right before a performance.

“I got lost,” Yuzuru lies, and he can’t reign in the ear to ear grin on his face.

Nanami-sensei only shakes her head and ushers her student towards the rink.

He skates fine, but only fine. He can’t stop thinking about sunshine and butterfly feelings, and it irritates him to no end.

Yuzuru ends his first Junior Grand Prix event in 4th place, and it’s not nearly enough. If anything, this has only made him hungry for more. For him, Italy will always be about learning the magic of kissing boys and also immediately learning how to shut out distractions. If he wants to win, then he can’t afford to be thinking about a silly boy in the middle of a skate.

-

He is lying flat-back on the ice, letting the watery cold seep through his clothes. He’s panting hard, and he scrunches his eyes close, trying to remember how to breath and gulping in air like a fish on the docks.

Nanami-sensei skates onto the ice towards him. He opens his eyes to pinprick spots of white and black and her face asking, “Do you want me to call your mother? Maybe you should try another acupuncture session?”

Yuzuru nods and closes his eyes again. He’s fourteen, and he finds himself desperately wishing that he didn’t have a body. He can never move fast enough or jump high enough to match the music. He always has to stop and catch his breath. Why can’t he just be the song? Why can’t he fly away? Why does he keep having to face these limits and boundaries?

-

An earthquake happens. Yuzuru spends three days in an evacuation center. He eats wakame onigiri made with cold water and sleeps curled up on tatami mats in a school gymnasium with his entire family and all that is left of their belongings.

He waits, and he waits. Time doesn’t feel real. It’s only three days, but as the earth continues to shake and shake and shake, he can’t help but wonder if it will ever end.

By the time he emerges from the other side, he feels like a different person. He has somehow become a symbol for the disaster. He is the figure skater from Sendai who ran out with his boots still on and watched as everything he had ever known was washed away in an instant.

That summer he does over 60 ice shows. It’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

-

Yuzuru falls again. It aches somewhere even deeper than his bones when he sees the concern in Nanami-sensei’s eyebrows.

“Yuzuru-kun, are you sure you want to add the quad sal? The program is just as good without it.”

Nanami-sensei doesn’t say it, but Yuzuru knows. The quad sal is a risk. He has to build up to it. He has to spend time practicing it instead of working on the choreography. When he goes for the quad, he is giving up some of the connective emotionality of skating. Yuzuru knows this, but he is also greedy. He wants to touch people’s hearts, but he also wants the gold.

“I can do it,” Yuzuru pushes himself off the ground, shaking off the lingering ice.

She sighs and smiles fondly. She understands. “Okay, let’s run it again.”

He can do it. He has to do it. He will be both, and he will win. This he believes.

-

“I can’t go to Canada,” Yuzuru protests.

He knows that there’s no point by now. He’s tried a thousand different ways of pleading, but the JSF helped work out this deal, and they’re convinced that this would be the best for him.

“Yuzuru,” his mother says gently, “this will be very good for you. Do you want Brian Orser to coach you?”

Yuzuru opens his mouth and no sound comes out. Of course he’d loved to be coached by Brian Orser, but Canada is so far away from Japan. How many sacrifices will other people have to make for his dream? His sister had to stop. His mother is going to uproot her entire life to follow him to North America. So many people in Sendai have suffered. So many people still don’t have their lives back. What right does he have to abandon them in favor of his own selfish dreams?

He nods mutely in defeat.

“Okay, honey. We’ll let them know.” His mother makes to leave but hesitates at the door of his room, sighing deeply. “Try not to worry so much, Yuzu.”

He nods again, leaning his head all the way back until he can count the water stains on his ceiling. He is seventeen, and he thinks, rather dramatically, _“I am a traitor.”_

-

Canada is a whole other monster. The eloquence that Yuzuru fought so hard for, that Nanami-sensei so appreciated in their brainstorming sessions, has been thrown out the window. Ground zero. Start over.

Sometimes he misses Japan so much it hurts. On those days, every syllable of English that he has to force out scrapes the sides of his throat and gets caught to the roof of his mouth until everything aches a bloody mess. Yuzuru kind of hates speaking English. It’s a constant reminder that he doesn’t belong, that he is the stranger here, that once more he has been uprooted and displaced. His accent is a constant reminder of what he left behind, of how he abandoned them.

But this is all just a new challenge, and Yuzuru is no stranger to those. He refuses weakness as he always has. He won’t allow himself to complain until he becomes stronger.

“How’re you adjusting to Canada so far?” Brian asks, a week in.

“It’s good,” he lies.

-

 _“Dios mio,”_ Yuzuru hears Javier curse as Yuzuru falls down hard, sliding some couple feet.

“Hey, Javi.” Yuzuru groans and pushes himself onto his elbows.

“You’re insane.” Javier shakes his head as he offers Yuzuru a hand up. Yuzuru isn’t quite sure what ‘insane’ means, but he can gather enough from Javier’s exasperated tone and worried grin.

“I’m not.”

“You are.”

Javier clasps Yuzuru on the shoulder. The older skater is tactile and friendly and charming. Sometimes he smiles at Yuzuru, and Yuzuru’s stomach will flutter. It’s not a crush because Yuzuru can’t allow that, but sometimes when Yuzuru is tired, it’s close.

“You know you don’t have to skate into every jump as if you’re ready for take off, right? Slow it down a bit before you go all crazy. There’s no point in going so fast into a jump if you're just gonna fall,” Javier teases, but his light-hearted advice is tinted with concern.

Yuzuru shakes his head and scrunches his nose in distaste. His ability to understand English is much higher than his ability to convey his own thoughts, and he always ends up struggling at this stage. He doesn’t know how to explain it. He’s a rhythmic jumper. Step sequences are like melodies, and transitions are chord shifts, and jumps are the percussion. It doesn’t feel right to slow it down. Yuzuru skates, and he feels the swell of a heartbeat coming, the drummer’s arm raised and ready to crash down, and he jumps. That’s the only way Yuzuru knows how to skate.

He remembers his mother’s words and the trick with challenges, and he tries. “No, I can’t. Skate flow but jump like a beat. Have to go. Like crash into wall.”

Javier raises his eyebrows, and he opens his mouth as if he wanted to say something more. In the end, he decides against it and just smiles. “Whatever works for you I suppose.”

Yuzuru pouts, unsatisfied with the conclusion of this interaction. “Your quad sal is really good. Can you show?”

“You want me to show you my quad?” Javier asks.

Yuzuru nods. Between Javier’s messy Madrelino accent and his own jumble of phonetics that could maybe be English, it’s hard to talk to his fellow skater, and Yuzuru has been building up the courage to ask this.

“Well, watch closely then. I don’t just turn tricks for anyone,” Javier jokes.

Yuzuru laughs. He doesn’t know exactly what Javier says, but he hears the levity and the tell-tale pause in the other’s breath that means he’s waiting for a laugh. He also laughs because he will get to study that quad sal up close and because Javier is warm in this icy rink. He is sunshine, and Yuzuru doesn’t exactly mind spending a few minutes of practice to bask in the warmth.

-

Somehow, some way, Yuzuru wins the Olympics. He’s always believed that he was capable. He’s always wanted it, but it’s nothing like he imagined.

He’s a champion now, but he’s only faced with more doubt. His performance was nowhere close to perfect. Words like “overscoring” and “bias” are thrown around, and it hurts.

It hurts, but not as much as the helplessness. What good is this ambition of his if after all that he still cannot do anything for his hometown?

Yuzuru will prove them wrong. He’ll prove himself worthy of the medal, of their support.

He gives his Olympic winnings to Tohoku. It’s not enough. It’ll never be enough.

-

Nam is funny. He’s quick to tease and quick to laugh. Yuzuru almost treats him like a little brother, and he enjoys the younger skater’s presence. However, in the last week or so? Not so much.

Over the course of the week, Nam has been confessing to anyone who would listen about his rather hopeless crush on a senior girl at his school. Brian just shakes his head fondly, Tracy finds it all hilarious, and Javier has been making fun of him relentlessly, dropping the girl’s name at every opportunity. Yuzuru found it funny at first, but there is only so much that he can hear about this girl without wanting to strangle Nam.

“She’s so pretty,” Nam whines. He’s scrolling through something on his phone. No doubt lurking her Instagram again.

“I know, Nam. We all know,” Yuzuru says, rolling his eyes as he opens his locker. “You should be ready to skate. You train next.”

“Okay, okay,” Nam surrenders, putting his phone away.

Yuzuru nods and uncrosses his arms, considering his job here done. He starts packing his duffel bag and longs for a hot shower at home.

“Hey, Yuzu. Have you ever dated a girl before?”

Yuzuru stops and turns to look at Nam’s dazed expression. Probably thinking about the girl again. Yuzuru rolls his eyes again. “No, I haven’t.”

Nam snaps to attention, and suddenly he’s staring right at Yuzuru, studying him. The gaze makes Yuzuru decidedly uncomfortable.

“What about a boy?” Nam asks, and Yuzuru doesn’t think sixteen year-olds should be allowed to be this observant.

“No, I don’t date,” Yuzuru answers truthfully, but his blush gives away more than he is ready to.

“But why?”

“It’s distraction,” Yuzuru says pointedly, raising his eyebrows at Nam’s skates which have yet to make it onto its owner’s feet.

Nam relents and slips his feet into the boots, lacing them up. He’s still staring at those laces when he mumbles, “Sounds lonely.”

Yuzuru bristles at the quiet comment. He wants to say something uncharitable like, _“Tell me your opinion on that when you get an Olympic gold.”_ He doesn’t. Yuzuru isn’t cruel, so instead he picks up his bag and walks away, calling out a half-hearted goodbye over his shoulder.

This is what it takes to win. Yuzuru knows this, and he wants nothing more than to win.

-

Here is a truth about Yuzuru Hanyu: he wasn’t a child prodigy. There was nothing that made him inherently different from all the other little boys of the novice class. He fell more often than not when he first started jumps and spins, but he never stopped trying again and again. He has never been afraid to throw himself full-bodied into every endeavor.

In 2014, Yuzuru learns what fear means. It means a crash and bloody bandages and falling. Constantly falling. He is haunted by the thought of falling. He goes for a jump, and he feels a hesitation that never existed before. A pause. A sharp intake of breath that ruins everything.

Part of him feels betrayed. He’s never been so unsure of his skates, of the ice beneath his feet, but it was mid-season, and his heart beat too strongly to ever truly falter. The momentum of his ambition, his need to redeem himself, propelled him through it. Sure, he was scared, but that wasn’t enough for him to give up.

Yuzuru has always been greedy. As an athlete, he has a big mouth and an unyielding attitude. The Grand Prix Final gave him his redemption, and he thought that was it. That would be the end of his lesson here.

The beginning of 2015 teaches Yuzuru surgery and humility and patience. All things will pass with time, whether that be injuries or fears or the ghosts of losing. You can throw yourself full-bodied into every challenge, but you don’t always have to.

Here is another truth about Yuzuru: he is just an ordinary boy with an extraordinary dream that he made into reality.

-

Yuzuru stomps on the final beat and allows the exhilaration to electrify his nerves. He is grinning ear to ear.

 _“I’ve finally done it,”_ Yuzuru thinks, bowing endlessly to the audience, turning and turning until he is dizzy with it.

He’s finally managed to touch the chimney-smoke dream, the elusive fantasy that he’s been chasing after for so long. These programs today were magic. It felt like falling in love, and he swears he could feel the audience doing exactly that. He could see the world open up before him--oceans and plains, mountains and rivers. The music was the blood flowing through his veins. Every note struck some deep part of his soul. A personal heartbeat in the swell of a drum.

He laughs, and he thanks them all, and he forgets the growing pain in his foot. None of it matters in the face of greatness. He is standing on the edge of a cliff, and he is so close to flying.

_322.40_

Yes, none of it matters. He’s finally done it.

-

Amazingly, he does it again. He beats himself.

_330.43_

He’s so close he can taste it.

-

Worlds passes in a blur, in snapshot images left on the cutting room floor.

-

Before donning his boots, he sits on a bench and rubs at his traitorous foot. Yuzuru exhales loudly and downs two painkillers in one go.

-

The final chords of Chopin shiver in the air, tangling with the cheers of the stands in a strange waltz.

Yuzuru yells back at them, _“Did you see me?”_

Did you see me do the impossible? Did you feel it, too? Is it enough?

-

They have lauded him as perfect, as untouchable. They say that he must be some deity because there’s just no way for a mere mortal to do what he has done. He is a wizard, and his performance is magic. They have made him out to be an infallible titan.

But nothing is perfect, and he falls.

Yuzuru returns to his hotel room that night and clutches at his leg because none of it is fair. It’s all over, but he is still hurting. He let them down. He let the burden of all those words and all those eyes waiting for the incredible drag him down. His slim shoulders were not meant for the weight of Atlas.

The view before him blurs. Hot tears land on white knuckles wrapped around black fabric.

-

Requiem of Heaven and Earth. Yuzuru likes this program. He likes the way the lights will dim in the Gala, making it more intimate and personal. He likes the way the ice will fly through the darkness, the way everything feels lighter.

Nothing feels light right now. They’ve decided on surgery. Soon he won’t even be able to walk normally, let alone skate. He might have to give up on the one thing he loves most in this world. Brian advised him to pull out of the Gala, but he insisted. If he will have to give up all skating for the foreseeable future, then he wants one more performance on the world stage.

He knows this program, but it’s so different than any other time he’s done it. The lights are dazzling, and he almost feels dizzy, spinning away from the few things he had taken to be true and permanent. He’s landing his jumps, but he can’t help but feel as if he is in a free fall. There’s nothing left to ground him. The music sounds, and he can hear a thousand heartbeats in the single melody. It is magic, and he is flying. Is this heaven or earth? Nothing hurts anymore, but he kind of still wants to cry anyway because he doesn’t know how this will end. Is this goodbye or see you later?

For Yuzuru, this performance has always been about the earthquake, about desperation, about hopeless hope, about home and where to find it when you lose it. He thought that he knew what it meant to lose a home. The disaster, the move to Canada, but he was wrong. He never feels more at home than when he is on the ice. Through it all, he has always ice skating. If he ever felt down, he could always return to the rink. It is so deeply ingrained in him, even deeper than the greed and the pride. It feels like a universal truth. So obvious that he doesn’t realize it until he’s faced with the danger of losing it for good.

The music fades out, but he’s barely aware of it. He wraps his arms around himself and stares into the dark ceiling beyond the spotlights, hoping to find an answer that he knows won’t be there. His foot aches. His heart aches. Is it over? Is this it? Who is Yuzuru Hanyu without the ice?

The applause sounds, and he knows.

_Goodbye._

_Goodbye._

_Goodbye._

-

One more honest truth: he is only a man. He is not a titan or a deity or a wizard. There was no magic, and he never actually flew. All he knows is his pride and his greed. All he knows is that he loves ice skating, and he hopes that others can too. He only hopes that it was enough, that he can be enough.

-

It is the tail winds of spring. The skies have been blue and cloudless for weeks on end. People walk the streets in shorts and skirts, relishing in the freedom. Toronto embraces summer like an old friend, welcoming her in after long moons of cold. It has all melted away, leaving nothing but bright laughter and open mouths.

The months have been long and quiet and unbelievably hard. There were times of wavering and times of strength, but he’s back.

Tracy and Brian and the Cricket Club. Starting small. Stroking, skating skills, single jumps. It’s learning how to breathe again. It’s remembering that you have hands.

Yuzuru falls. He can hear Brian’s correction in the distance. It was only a single toe loop, but he still fell. Recently, he’s taken to mumbling to himself, _“If only wings grew from my back.”_ If only he could actually fly. He came so close to the sensation before. Now he wants to grasp it with both hands.

But somehow, this time doesn’t burn as much as it usually does. He’s been doing better. He can land the singles most of the time now. He even managed a double loop the other day. It’s hard, but at least the injury was in his left foot, and he can still land. Small things. Baby steps.

The morning light streams through the high windows, reflecting off the mirrors and making the ice shine. Yuzuru flips onto his back and breathes in, filling his lungs with the comforting cool air. He laughs. In relief. In happiness. He’s come home.

_See you later._

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently, I am super emo about Yuzuru Hanyu. Like almost 5,000 words emo about this strange bird man. I don't claim to know anything about him. I don't even necessarily believe that this is how he thinks or feels in real life. I just really love how eloquent Yuzuru can be, and this story was inspired by some quotes that I like. I took those interesting quotes, built a character study around them, and then wrote a self-indulgent ode of torrential word vomit about how much I love his skating and him as an athlete. It is a work of fiction, and I have definitely taken creative liberties here. Especially on timeline as I didn't exactly spend A LOT of time researching lol.
> 
> The title comes from [this post.](http://jardinaquatique.tumblr.com/post/142110742026/a-personal-heartbeat-in-the-swell-of-a-drum)
> 
> These were the big quotes that I based all of this around.  
> 1) [This](http://hanyuedits.tumblr.com/post/105541944542/to-be-honest-i-dont-even-know-how-to-capture-this) was the one that jump started this whole thing. Greed and pride ended up being a pretty important theme here.  
> 2) About [flying and dreams.](http://yuzusorbet.tumblr.com/post/152338171487/article-from-spur-magazine-skating-is-life-by)
> 
> There were definitely other things that I read that influenced this a lot, but these told me how I wanted to begin and end it. Thank you for reading!


End file.
